Loveless
by Commander-Inky
Summary: ‘Loveless’ centres around the relationships of two violent young men, Rikan and Vincent; hatred, love and obsession in the Shinra Turks. (Slash)


I

_Sometimes the Conditioning Fails._

The rust ragged iron breathed and shuddered as Rikan was flung against it, the impetus of his warm body dusting the elaborate, twisting metalwork of sugary ice which had lain raw upon the mansion gate. His shoulders and barley-hued hair were bejewelled for a fleeting moment with slivered diamond and melting blue topaz. The riches faded and became dew, gem-like spheres glistening, entangled amongst the down turned thickets of his eyelashes.

His blood was a hot gloss sticky on his uniform, his face. Rikan felt his stance weaken and his heart flutter. Firm and slender hands gripped his narrow waist whilst Vincent crushed his torso against him, lips grazing across a clenched jaw line.

Tears clotted in Rikan's throat. His dim, deadened blue eyes were doused with brine.

Fabric slapped at the air, and a firm, skeletal hand met his neck, tightening.

The Commander heaved an irritated sigh, pinching firmer around his officer's gorge. He shook his head sadly, even as the quivers of a swift pulse reverberated through his wrist.

"Do I have your attention now?" He drawled idly. "You need to learn to control that mouth of yours, Soldier-boy. Whose _'inferiority complex is fully justified' _now? Who do you think is the _'laughable inadequate' _now? "

"…M-me." He hissed, his euphony strangled. Vincent smiled in his small triumph, dementedly, staring down the gleam of raw steel in Rikan's eyes. He forced him closer, greeting his lips with a fierce, laughing kiss.

"Me _what_?"

"… Me s – sir."

Pain splintered in jagged scarlet through Rikan's brain, a drowsy paralysis hammered in his arteries. Red oblivion danced in his retina, crimson and white flares scorching searing scars onto his gaze.

"_Precisely_."

He slumped to the hoar frosted ground, gasping. He struggled to engorge his empty lungs with crisp air and then released a hiss of annoyance. A shadow of agony shimmered deep within his eyes as he found the ragged, crescent moon scars branded onto the pale lineaments of his neck.

The whispering air melted over Rikan's sharp scowl, breathy, lusty, vengeful promises dissolving in spiralled vortices of pale vapour. He glowered into Vincent's eyes, searching. Black ripples of shadow glistened over crimson waters, and he could drown in silence in that scarlet hell.

"Slit your wrists, Vincent, it'll lower your _blood pressure_." His eyes gleamed darkly, fixed colourless in a listless reverie. He spoke softly, his tone of gravel, of rust scraping.

Vincent gazed at him in quiet astonishment before a deliberate, scowling smile spread over his lips. "Pardon me?"

"I _said_ – I'll cut you open and throw you in the river." He told Vincent, voice hollow with resent. And with a vague happiness he realised he had said it aloud. The cold breeze bit at his cheek like a dull-whetted blade as he gathered himself, standing.

The officer Turk recoiled and smoothed a nervous hand through his glossy black tresses. His eyes of bloodied ruby met Rikan's steely focus, ripping.

"That's it. You're _finished_ in the Turks. You'll lose you job, _oh_, don't worry – I'll make _sure_." He smiled, jaw clenching. His rich tones held a taint of throaty yearning.

"...Come on then. Hit me..._Hit me_." Rikan pulled a butterfly knife, twirling it in his pale hand, a mad shiver of laughter escaping his throat. "I'll _slice_ you. I'll pull out your _veins _like little ribbons." A chill stirred in the veins of the blood-eyed Turk and his breath escaped in a gasping veil. He pressed his back into the rust ragged structure of the gate until it heaved against the sweat-slick impetus of his body. Fear clawed at the sinews of his heart.

"You will hang, Rikan, hang with a broken neck, if you _dare_."

"You _will_ hang, Ri-_khan._" He was a cruel mimic, and his Vincent was high and whining, upper-class. "Temper, temper, Vincent. Let's not get unpleasant. You know, I think there might be something _wrong_ with me lately, maybe, because I look at you, and," The wind stirred the stricken leaves, sighed amongst the trees as they breathed and swayed. In the descending gloom the fair Turk's eyes flared in a disarmingly tranquil marine aquarelle. He was beautiful. But his beauty was frozen, un-dead, and Vincent shuddered when their gazes clashed. "I look at you, your _anatomy_, and I see where the _prime cuts _would be. See? I could _skin_ you alive if I wanted to."

"My...god...you've _snapped_."

He tilted his head, and wiped away his smirk.

And in his eyes was the maelstrom. A squall of perfect, neon fury.

A vision prelude to Death.

"Have I? I don't _feel_ any different." His voice was a caustic and splintering whisper. "You make a game of me, Valentine. You'd force your little pet corporal down. You'd make me _lie_ with you and you'd make sure I bled for it. Wouldn't you? Blood is the only way you'll learn Ri_kan_, that's what you'd say. It's the only way you'll learn obedience, because you can't reason with gutter boys, pain is what they understand best. And do you know what _Vinny_?"

"Not so free with my name…"

Agony exploded within Vincent's mind. Rikan had punched him. Blood gushed in torrents and rivulets across his face and mouth, the taste headily metallic against his lips. He crumpled, hands drenched in thick, treacle-black pulse. Stunned, furious, anger began to dull the keen of the sharp, waspish little strike.

"…You'd be _absolutely_ right! Ten _fucking_ points to you!" The handsome and terrible corporal laughed hideously, biting down a smile. "Get a_ fucking haircut_."

"Leave me alone. I _hate_ you." Valentine rasped, lip bloodied.

"I can tell when you're _lying_." He smashed a scissoring kick into Vincent's chest and tried to persuade himself the voices murmuring in the reaches of his skull were imagined.

Valentine slumped onto the raw-frosted ground, spattered in thin streaks of scarlet warmth and spittle. Rage numb, he groped for the maple-veneer stock of his Colt automatic and raised it with an uncertain sneer.

A sick grin cracked on Rikan's features as he connected his knee with the aiming Turk's jaw, his nauseating, superior laugh crackling through the limpid air.

Vincent crashed onto the ground, heaving his breath, features twisted in wordless agony. With a suddenly deepening scowl Rikan kicked the pistol into the radius of weak darkness and stood woodenly, his sickly blue gaze grinding into the Commander.

"Do you _know_ what it feels like to be _ripped_ inside, Vin?" His glossy leather boots creaked as he stepped toward the stricken Turk in the living silence. He felt a heat rise and crawl over his skin, a sweat of anger.

"_Answer_ me." His voice carried the uneasy high pitch of a doubtful command.

Vincent hissed, spitting the gore from his mouth.

Rikan's fists trembled and clenched, the twin ligaments jutting from his wrists as a tearful gleam spilled over those glacial eyes.

Silver light cast from the slim grin of the moon caressed Rikan's features cravingly. His lips parted in a wicked, candied smile and his dull phosphor eyes flickered under the lick of moonlight.

Silence thickened in the still air. Vincent was staring warily at his young inferior, the rushing rasp of his breath caught in twines of vapour between his hands, heart rhythm fluttering.

"You don't look so _legendary _now."

Valentine whined a sob. He raised his imperially thin frame from the snow-glazed concrete, shuddering from fear and pain and the gut-gnawing freeze. He took a handful of his sharply tailored suit and, gasping, patted the vines of blood from his mouth.

"How _you_ got to be _Commander _I shall never know. But come on, you can say it. Always had a soft spot for me. You think I could become great – don't you? An Executive?" His voice was clotted with arrogance and he smiled unpleasantly.

He rubbed the blood from his face and smiled unsettlingly. "You can be _stupid_ sometimes, Rikan, you're too irrepressible to obey, and too ruthless to ever command. You couldn't _order_ a take-away." Vincent smiled sourly. "_And _stop that pathetic street whine, it's irritating. Slum cut. _Cheap_. You have the look of a gutter-slut all over you."

He met with a bleak, harrowing veil of silence.

"I do not."

"Don't get above yourself, Ri."

"Oh, I wouldn't ever,_ Vin._"  
He flashed his canines, his blood-stained lips curling into a sneer. Vincent's eyes glinted with a dangerous lust, his voice harsh and snarling. "Your sugar daddies spoiled you _rotten_, didn't they? You just can't abide not getting your own way! You're a _child_, Rikan."  
"I'm old enough to kill, aren't I?"

Rikan edged toward Vincent, slowly, a terrible single-mindedness settling in his creamy-blue butcher's eyes, smouldering under silver pale lashes. Kicking him down, with a dancer's suddenness, he pressed a polished sole hard onto Vincent's windpipe and felt him choke and squirm. His breath toyed idly with moon gilded tresses.

A knot tightened in Valentine's throat, chains of forge hot agony wrapping and enveloping his convulsing chest. He thrashed, but Rikan was strong above him, and laughing idly.

"A little _breathless_, are we? Speak up, then. You kill me Vince, you absolutely do. You're a _scream_." He stepped back, pacing around the stricken man. "_Disgusting_."

Vincent choked back a sob, heaving. "…I always knew it – I always knew you were a traitor! You _promised_ you would follow me until the end. "

"...Maybe, but only out of morbid curiosity. No offence, but you don't exactly _inspire_ loyalty. People say I've got no taste, but I do like_ you_."

The breath seemed to hitch in his pale throat.

"So I knocked you about, occasionally! They were _love-taps. _And you broke your word, which is truly awful."

"I know Vince, don't _whinge_, I _know_. I tried to love you. And every time you beat me until I couldn't answer back, I knew I'd driven you to it. That it was my fault. But it wasn't. _You wouldn't play the game_. And you were very unfair, Vincent. _Very unfair_. Yet, my love for you never died - It was killed."

"You'll always be a _whore_. You...never loved me, you bastard!"  
"Oh, do shut up."

He knelt, straddling Vincent's chest, his eyes glistening slits of savage storm-grey blue, radiating a nightmarish charge. He gripped the dark Turk's wrists, his fingers curling around tendons like tailored fetters, gently pinioning him from shoulder to ankle with his own body weight. His hot breath stirred over Vincent's lips, his voice a whisper of silk as he said, "I am a _deceiver_. A manipulator. But I _wouldn't_ lie to you..."

He crushed his selfishly pouting lips to Vincent's mouth, hungry against his clenched teeth. Hard enough to bruise and flush a hot, wine-coloured blush onto the Commander's cheeks. His rusty eyes lolled back, a small moan of submission choked down in his throat.

Rikan grinned into their unholy congress. Physically superior, Vincent was taller and easily stronger than his counterpart. He could buck free and close his fingers around the boy's neck and snap his windpipe, and that would be the last time the charming turncoat ever disobeyed anyone's orders. The last time he would ghost spidery caresses over Vincent's skin, or fold into a jealous embrace on silent sheets, or kiss him deeply, his bitter sweet flavour lingering in the throat and in the mind. Rikan broke away, and from his pale, smiling lips he wiped away the sticky taste of Vincent, stroking his superior's aching lip with a manicured thumbnail.  
"See? Now _all I want you to do_ is recommend me for promotion."  
The world was hissing, hissing to Rikan's tone. Rain moved over them, sweeping, a veil of sound, of roaring, liquid thickness.  
"It's ...raining, Rikan." Desperation was a hollow note in his voice.  
"Oh don't worry. You're not _sugar_. You won't _melt_." Rikan twisted his dark hair at the nape until the officer gasped and shot him a stare blinded by tears. The rain had plastered Rikan's hair to his face. Shadow lingered at his forehead, in the sockets of his eyes. He regarded Vincent with the blackest, hungriest envy. "Well?" His appealing, yet awful, viscera-tearing smile was fixed on his restrained superior.  
Vincent let his gaze touch Rikan, moving slowly and deliberately across his body before staring ceaselessly into seawater blue depths. "You want a recommendation? I recommend you never ask me again, you_ renter_."  
His unsettling smile faded, as he spoke, his voice was eerily tender, breathy. "_Fine_. That's just _splendid _with me. So, the answer's no?"  
"Do you know what you are Rikan?"  
"No. Ok, well, it doesn't matter. I'm going to _fucking take your job anyway_, I'll just have to replace you when you _die_. Which will be quite _soon_," He rounded on Vincent, flicking open his switchblade with wet, caressing fingers. They both stared at the blade's lethal, corpse-grey glittering. He spoke softly through a clenched grin. "Because I'm going to run you through like a slab of meat the very _second_ you turn your back to me. Got that, _Vince?_" A savage superciliousness was on his sneering face, as he arose, stepping away, swivel-hipped, from the palling form of his superior.  
The rain was tinselly, its breathy hiss hollow. His shirt was greying and lines of water were glistening ribbons falling from his jaw, his ivy-league jacket, trickling.  
"Rikan, do you _know_ what you are?" Vincent repeated, icily, wiping back his sticky hair.  
"Enlighten me."  
"You're a _psychopath._" Came his moneyed tone.  
"Oh, well ob_served_! Tell me Vincent. Do I _look_ insane to you?" Rikan was jerkily glancing behind himself constantly, willowy, the grey of his shirt stretching over his rippling stomach, slipping over the juts of his ribcage's architecture. The gently mocking pitch of his voice hitched, faltering. His expression was suddenly feral and desperate. "Well," He began, confessional. "I'm... on a _lot_ of anti-psychotics. And...can I tell you something else?" Rikan bent to stare. He was fashionably lean. "You look _marvellous_ wet. Really...What? What's the matter with _your face_?"  
"I'm _angry_ at you Rikan." He arose, to the full extent of his height, shivering with rage and giddy with adrenaline, his dark lips scowling. "_Corporal_. And, although you are an ungrateful little wretch, you ought to thank me for what I am about to do. It will _save your career_."  
"You want to _fight_? You want_ to fight_? _Good_. I like to fight." He gave his hideous, schizophrenic smile, breaking into a high, unhinged laugh. Vincent's leaping knife whipped over his cheek, a sighing, fluting kiss, from his aureate lip, catching his face in an that awful expression, a grin-like ribbon of blood painting a cruel, perpetual simper on his flawless, ghost-pale skin. His laughter caught in his throat, the shivering of the rain a roar in the gasping silence, as he touched the curling butchery on his face, stooping, staring emotionlessly at the blood spattering below, his own red death dripping with the dirty rainwater onto the concrete.  
Vincent backed away, the black blade held at his side melting into the velveteen darkness. He smirked, his smile grim and tempting, purposefully hateful. "Not so _pretty_ now, are we?" Sickly notes of lust and envy were a poisoned undercurrent in his rich tone. Eyes fixed warily on Rikan, he knelt, haunches quivering, to pick up his vicious Colt, and springing up his deadened aim fell on the practised liar, the pitiless joy dreadful on his handsome face. "You're _vile_ to me, Rikan. But you're not _sniggering_ anymore, are you?"  
He fixed dead, chemical eyes on Vincent, blood smeared over his arrogant, beautiful face like an urgent red kiss, scarlet drooling from his parted lips, teeth white. As he straightened, throwing back his head, pinkish bloody water arced from his brow, his loose, greasy hair plastering back with a slap. The hideous scar-smile was a painted theatrical mask of false glee, a jagged knife grin. His true expression was of unholy, concentrated calm, of dim sanitised analysis. He regarded Vincent with milky, disease-blue eyes, swaying in his idle stance. His rasping, grinding voice was infected with terrible, taunting, lyrical hatred. "Oh, so, _what's this_? Vincent doesn't like his _bit of rough_ any more? The _slum-boy _is getting a little too _clever, _a little too _ambitious_? Now you have to cut me to make yourself feel better? _Take a diazepam_. You're _jealous of me Vincent._" An expression of listless distaste crossed his lips, blood running onto his collar like a cheap lipstick smudge. His swaying body, its musculature working, was forged for passion, he moved like a dancer, sighing as he found the scabbard at his slim waist, hip jutting, drawing his thin, tempered blade with a lazing, flesh-smith's arrogance. "_But I'm more jealous of you_."  
Rikan's trembling disharmony made Valentine shiver. "I have this gun, you know. I could shoot you. It would blow your head off clean. Easily." Vincent snarled as he took aim, forcing a hopeless, haunted laugh. A dark, hungry flame languished with torrid black lustre in his eyes when he drew his slender fingers around the trigger. "Just come at me, Rikan, I _dare_ you."  
Stillness.

Rikan took the whining blade and pressed it to his lips, in a glaring mockery of a salute. Torrid. Ablaze. Evanescing quicksilver blue. His eyes were awful, spectral steel pyres of flaming aquamarine. They flickered with frosty pleasure.  
"See, now that's_ really funny._"  
Vincent smiled uncertainly. "What?"  
"Oh, it's probably nothing," He shuddered against the cold rain, shoulders writhing pleasantly. His ridiculous laughter was high and dripping with malice, the cracking note of artifice. "I won't interrupt. _Go ahead_."  
Vincent feigned laugh was mirthless and irritated, his gun dipping. He stopped abruptly, eyes searching, his practised smile falling. "No, what's so funny?"  
Rikan edged toward him, smiling cruelly. Vincent hissed a breath and refocused his perfect aim, halting his amused, creeping officer in his feral prowl. "Do you _really_ want to know, then?" He drew a pale, clasping hand from his blazer pocket, holding out six glistening cartridges to Vincent, blue funeral smoke eyes studying as his superior buckled slightly, crushed by realisation.  
"Recognise _these_, do we?"

He sniggered as Vincent recoiled, horrified, his slippery fingers snapping open his empty revolver, and with desolation slowly breaking over his face and body, he slumped against the high gate, gun gripped listlessly at his side, useless. Whisperingly, voice broken, toneless, "_Why_ do I have to die?"  
"That's a _hard_ one. Pass."  
"But...I think I love you, Rikan."  
His expression was of ghastly mutilated glee, grinning in the rain.  
"_Everyone_ loves me."  
Vincent paled, overmastered by sickness, with Rikan leaning to analyse his agony with staring, lustreless eyes. His laughter was slow and mechanical. "I really do wish I could have _had_ you one last time." He slapped Vincent into alertness with an open palm, nonchalant. "You _listening_?"  
The Commander smiled slowly, leering, an intense clotted silence pressing down, the inky reservoir of the night smothering, clasping. Rikan instinctively backed away, flourishing his sword, breathless with fear.  
"You little _coward_." Vincent stepped toward him, hissing. Rikan jerked back, wiping the hair from his raw-boned face, from his rain-reddened eyes. "You vicious little _bitch. _Come here. I want to _do_ something to you."  
He was guffawing, shivering, hunched around his sword, lowering his body, high shouldered, ribs visible through wet cotton. Teasingly, he offered the bullets to Vincent, snatching them back, his high laugh abrupt and ridiculous. Again he offered his pale palm, sneering, bending forwards, grin ragged.  
"Oh my god Rikan. _Tasteless_." Vincent staggered to a halt, expression a portrait of distaste and horror. His eyes were downcast, lips a disgusted pout. "What were you thinking with the _tie clip_?"  
"_What_? What do you mean?" Rikan, mortified, stared down slowly. "I like it." Pitching forward, Vincent lashed at his officer's palm, dashing the bullets to the cold ground. His joy was cruel, his smile a terrible, ravening promise. He chambered a cartridge, pressing the brutal muzzle under Rikan's jaw, between his thin cord-musculature, easing his head up. His sword clattered, released from a deathly hand. The treacherously fluttering wings of fear beat in cacophony deep within him, quivering in his tightened chest. He stiffened, and merely stared, the frightening glazed glare of the caged vengeful. Vincent was as pale as the moonlight and laughing monstrously.  
"Oh, I can't wait to tell the others about this. I'm sure our mutual friends can organise a little...corrective therapy for you. Happy? Oh god, I want to _kiss_ you, because I know what they'll _do_. Anything to say? Anything you want to say to me before you have to say _goodnight_?"  
A breathless silence.  
"Did you mean what you said about the tie clip?"


End file.
